Welcome to the Myths of Man

In my other series Alphabet Adventures I explore the dictionary and the words we use to describe our world in this series I intend to explore the stories we have told with them in order to attempt to describe how our world works.

Todays Myth

Before you read to much further please let me say that this post will discuss some current, active faiths I understand that discussing these in myths may offend some but please understand that this post is not here to belittle any beliefe, merely to explore early stories about this subject.

LANGUAGE

Source

Ok, so I'm clearly not saying that language is a myth that would just be silly, what I wanted to explore today was some of the stories we have told about this importance of language and its origins.

If you happen to read my Alphabet Adventures series you may have noticed that I always include a specific quote from the Bible not necessarily because I'm religious but because it speaks to the importance of language.

The LORD said, "If as one people speaking the same language they have begun to do this, then nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them." Gen 11:6

This Quote brings me to.

In the Beginning there was the word.

All throughout The Jewish Holy texts, the Tanakh and The Bible that power of language cannot be overstated just a scan of the first chapter of the first book of The Bible show the importance of language to this faith.

The very creation of the world was commanded by God by the power of his word, its by the power of language that God commanded let there be light, commanded that the sky and dry ground appear, commanded that stars to shine, commanded into existence all the fish of the sea and all the creatures of the land into being and each time it was by "And God Said".

The Word.

So important is language in this faith that the son of God, part if the Trinity, and the Messiah to mankind is the creative power of language incarnate.

1In the beginning the Word already existed.
The Word was with God,
and the Word was God.
2He existed in the beginning with God.
3God created everything through him,

and nothing was created except through him.
4The Word gave life to everything that was created,a
and his life brought light to everyone. John 1 1-4

In Mans Hands.

The tower of babel is there we get to the myth part, that part of the story that attempts to explain the cause of why we have people scattered across the globe that speak languages that have little or no apparent connection.

The story of the Tower of Bable told in Genisis 11:1 is about the power language has even in mortal hands and goes a little something like this.

The whole world and all its people united by one language had found a plain in Shinar which provided a great settlement place, being united by language they had developed technology and craftmanship baking bricks and using mortar instead of just carving stone, the people after building themselves a city set to building a great tower, so they could make a name for themselves lest they be scattered across the face of the earth.

But God came down as saw the city and the tower they had built, follow the quote.

"If as one people speaking the same language they have begun to do this, then nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them."

He follows that up by descending upon them to confuse their language so they could no longer understand each other destroying their unity in language and causing them to become scattered over the world.

Don't miss that important line "NOTHING SHALL BE IMPOSSIBLE FOR THEM"

They are everywhere.

Stories we tell about the origins of all the diverse languges we have are are everywhere across the globe in many cultures, its almost as if it's an important topic for man to explain.

Multiple cultures have a combo flood/babel narrative for an explanation, some of the Americas attribute mixed language to the coyote, and one myth even attributes the confusion of languages to the cannibalism of various parts of an old lady, and the Greeks told of Hermes confusing the language of man because he is a dirty trickster.

Common Ancestry

These stories of one world culture, united by a common language are almost as prevalent and the idea of common ancestry of that initial Adam and Eve architype, while I'm not sure the myths we have are going to get us anywhere near knowing that first language was, unfortunately, neither will all the theories of all the worlds best linguists but what is interesting is that there exist so many cultures around the world share this idea, the question becomes just how long is cultural memory, and just how powerful was that first oral tradition to be able to imbed those memories.

Previous Episodes.
Abracadabra, Beowulf, Bodhivista, Medusa

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